Beverage Industry Secrets: From Startup to $4 Billion Exit | Expert Insights with Former 7-Eleven Beverage Chief

Thought leaders, are you ready to learn how successful brands are really built? So in today’s episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, we dive deep into the world of product development and market success with beverage industry expert Debbie Wildrick. From their experience at running seven 11 and North America to helping startups achieve multimillion dollar exit, Debbie reveals why 80% of new products fail in their first year, and what separates the winners.

From the losers. Discover the 10 critical pillars every business needs for success. Whether you are launching a beverage brand or building any consumer focused business, stay tuned because this is a game changing set of insights that could transform your approach to business growth. Get ready for this very special episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and I think we have someone extraordinary with us today because Debbie and I got chatting a little bit and she’s got a lot of really interesting stories that I know is gonna benefit everyone in our audience listening in today.

Debbie, firstly, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

And guess let’s start, let’s kick things off with, just give everyone a little bit of an introduction as to who you are.

Okay. I’m Debbie Wildrick and I’ve been in the industry, in the US for all of my career. Mostly many a lot of my experience has been in the beverage business.

I actually ran all of beverages for seven 11 North America for a. Quite a bit of time in the two thousands, and that led me to really understand a lot about what it takes to put a product on the shelf and have that shelf leave the shelf and into the consumer’s hands and then into their mouths, of course, over and over again.

And that really. Is what it takes to successfully develop a product. So I’ve been working with startups either directly for in executive positions, running every aspect of a business, all verticals, everything from product development to sales and distribution to certainly the financials and the viable business model and whether or not we.

Whether or not we have a chance to really be successful, and my whole goal is helping entrepreneurs really mitigate risk and help them to be successful with their with their product launches. A and it is a a really interesting space, and I know a little bit about the the beverage industry, but it’s it, I think the one thing to keep it for people to keep in mind as well is that it’s not always direct to consumer.

You’re selling either, is that you’re selling a lot to retailers as well, aren’t you?

I spoke with somebody else the other day about this. It really is a B2B. Because you are selling to the retailer and you. Are E except with e-commerce. Obviously you are B2C, but most of this industry will remain.

The shopper still spends a lot of time shopping at retail in person and. That’s what it really means you’re selling to the retailers, to the distributors who get the products to the retailers. And where the real consumer aspect comes in is that the retailer agrees to put your product on the shelf.

And so you’re selling to them and they’re selling to the consumer and the consumer makes those decisions. And if they don’t make the decisions, obviously. You’ve got your challenges on your hand.

It is quite a complicated industry in many respects because you’ve got a lot of suppliers, generally speaking in the first instance and leading you into a, what can be a large production set up that one needs, and then you’re going into, as you’re saying, there.

Understanding multiple audiences because you, you have to really understand what your distributors want. You have to understand then what your retailers want, and you have to understand ultimately what the consumers want. That is a lot of a lot of different moving parts to think about.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So you’re absolutely right. The distributor has to be convinced that. That they will put a product on their trucks that the retailer will actually support and purchase. And in, in our business, a lot of times we say This is a chicken and the egg business, because the distributor going out as an, as a new brand.

The distributor expects you to already have the acceptance of the retailer and the retailer of course. Really would like for you to have the acceptance of the consumer, but you don’t always know that and when you’re first moving forward. I have just written a white paper and overview of what I call my pillar number one, to having a successful company, and it is about market opportunity.

And consumer need and figuring that out before you ever even enter into a product launch so that you have a better understanding that it will actually move off the shelf. And that’s really the end result. But the, all the steps in the way of the supply chain. Everything from production to distribution to the retailer are just getting you to the consumer and the consumer has to respond.

I. It’s not an industry for the faint-hearted really, is it? You can’t it’s not something that you dabble in. Although what’s interesting is there’s been a lot of I guess pop-up small, particularly particularly in the alcohol related beverage side of things. A lot of small players in the market who more or less start from their home or a small facility building and then go and go from there.

But it is a it’s a very difficult space to. Make money in and to be competitive in.

Yes, it is. There’s a very famous brand, and I talk about, I tell this story quite a bit. It’s called Vitamin Water, and I’m not sure if how far they spread across the world, but they actually sold to Coca-Cola.

For $4.1 billion when they were at 600 million in revenue in trailing revenues for the last 12 months, and they were in year number nine and had not shown profitability until year number eight and had raised a lot of money before that their, the sale of the company of 4.1 billion. So it’s an industry that is.

It’s got great stories great stories if you’re able to do that. But it is really hard work and it is very hard to make money. Eight outta 10, eight out of 10 new companies fail every year.

It’s a very high percentage because a lot of people come in with a great idea and it’s easy, isn’t it, in that sense to have the idea, because we all go and buy a drink from a local store, and we think, oh, if it only had a touch of this, or what if we did it this way instead?

So it’s easy to have those ideas, but the reality of it is quite a difficult one. And talk to me about that. You’ve worked with startups as well. How does that. Come about for people, what’s the, what is the step to actually get them out of that 80% that are going to fail and to get them on the right path from the beginning?

I would say that it’s really ticking on all levels of the industry, and I’ve been working on writing the 10 pillars. I’ve had the 10 pillars for a long time. As to what you need to have in order to be successful. But, having four or five of those, that’s one of the biggest issues.

Um, and like I said, the starting point. Most entrepreneurs, many new products come to fruition because I have a need. I want to I’m lactose intolerant and the people that created the brand called Oatley, which is an oat drink as a, as an example, were I. Looking for something that lacto was lactose intolerant and or for people that are lactose intolerant.

And so they, they said there’s nothing on the market like this. And so they created a product and Oatley, as an example, was very successful, but. There’s so much more than that. So the first, the very first step is you have to have a consumer need, even if you’re trying to create it to some degree on your own.

But you also really have to begin to understand all aspects of the business. And so the second factor that is critical is that we go into this. Without really understanding our viable business model, which is real simple. We look at what can we command as a price point at retail to the consumer.

And we back in all the supply chain aspects of it, the distribution, the retailer’s profitability, but and all the way down, of course to the cost of goods. And if we’re not making. The right levels of product on a piece of paper, on a back of a napkin. You can do this. You really are setting yourself up for failure because you get into production or you you get to retail and you’re shipping costs are outta line.

Any number of things can happen if you haven’t really, you haven’t really done this simple model and then. One of the areas that I think is critical, I said that eight out of 10 fail in the first year. In the second year, eight out of 10 of those, if you will, or 80% of those will fail because they’ve run outta money or they didn’t have enough money to begin with.

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Eight out of 10 of those, if you will, are 80% of those will fail because they’ve run outta money or they didn’t have enough money to begin with.

It’s a very expensive. Place to be. It’s not unlike a lot of industries where you can come in on the back of a computer and you can design something and start offering your services.

There’s a lot of things to consider because production is a huge thing. And I think the other thing too, of course, is there’s. A fair amount of time that’s needed before you can actually get up and running and selling products. It’s not, again, not a lot of service-based businesses that can open their doors today and start serving clients that afternoon.

It’s, there’s a lot involved. So what’s the actual lead time before you actually get you, you start from the idea and actually getting out and selling something.

Six to nine months. Six to nine months, absolutely. I’ve done a, I first started creating products when I was with seven 11. And of course our executive management team, it had expectations that were unbelievable.

And so I did a critical path document way back then that that actually puts all the steps in the timing in one. One model so that you can really look at making sure that you are getting those steps ahead of time completed, and then. You’ve got a launch date at the end and if you’re following your critical path, then you’ve got six to nine months If you’re not following your critical path very well or things, if there’s hiccups along the way, then, it could be a year to two years.

I’ve seen new brands not launch for two years. Wow.

It’s, and I think the interesting thing about this space as well is that generally I would gather that a lot of the majority of people that come into this space have no experience. Absolutely. So following a critical path and having someone like yourself to Abbott to guide them is going to be so critical because of the amount of moving parts that are involved, as we’ve said.

Yes, absolutely. And. One of the things that, that happens for me quite often, and it’s especially been happening in the last 10 years, but a lot of a lot of famous brands even even 20 years ago, right outta college people, I wanna be an entrepreneur. I wanna start. My own company. I wanna build a brand.

I have a need I believe that there’s nothing like it on the market. I can make it happen. Zero experience. Zero experience, even running any kind of business, much less running in the food and beverage business.

Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of lessons for people in this that. A lot of people wait for a while before they get some kind of coach or consultant in, but often, particularly in the startup phase like this, having someone that can mentor you, guide you, coach you, consult you for you is just super critical, isn’t it?

It is. And I like to say that the best coaching that you can have is. Is to have somebody like myself who has actually started out in the industry when I was in my mid twenties, working at retail and moving up along the industry. And so it’s important when I start a consulting agreement that is for a new entrepreneur, we will actually do the critical path that I referenced.

And we’ll lay that out. And then each week we’ll meet and I will guide them through exactly what they need to do to meet the next objective.

And I can imagine in this kind of space that it’s really passion driven, that the people who start this up have a real passion for what they want.

This is not just a kind of a side hustle ’cause they just said, oh, this might be a nice place to make money. You, because of the lead time, because of the amount involved. It’s a passion project, isn’t it?

It’s a passion pro project. Speaking of that lack of experience, there’s so many times I’ve had conversations and even after I explained to them some of the aspects of what it really takes to get.

The product to market you, you will have that entrepreneur that says, but I can do it. I can do it. I’ve got a great idea. I’ve got a great idea, and I can do it. And, she’s making it seem so hard, but it, I’m so passionate about it that I can do it and it it really gets in the way sometimes of being successful.

I I want to explore that because that is such a common thing in so many businesses that it, the passion that people have is fantastic, but it needs to be curtailed and it needs to also be, I. Pigeonholed in the sense that you need to be can thinking of your audiences, and in this case, multiple audiences because what you want doesn’t necessarily match ultimately with all those different audiences either.

So you have to you might have started off with passionately about a good idea, but you have to listen to what everyone else wants. I, I guess using it, it’s, we had this debate in my family just the other day where. Do we have ginger in the drink or not have ginger in the drink?

I love ginger, so I’m quite happy to have it in the rest of the family. Not so much. And but that’s the little thing where you have to understand those little decisions can have huge implications. And it’s not just about ingredients, it’s about all of the things that make up what ultimately is the product that you’re selling.

Yes, that’s true. I actually had a client who was developed a ginger beverage. And do you know that it took about six months for them to get the formulation? Not only because they had all the family members involved, and it was two sisters and the one sister had created it for the other sister who was always getting sick while she was pregnant.

And so that was the start of it. But it, it’s not, it’s certainly not just listening to your family members either. The ultimate guide is being able to try your product with multiple consumers before you ever even think about formulating. And that’s where we also miss it.

We, it’s our idea. We think we’ve got it the way that we want it and we haven’t really spoke outside our internal network. I.

It is surprising how often that simple idea translates across to multiple businesses that people start off with an idea because they believe there’s a gap there without actually ever testing it to see whether other people think exactly the same thing.

And it’s such a simple idea. Yet, it’s often often lost and it has to happen all the way throughout the process, right? We’re talking about the basics of the makeup of the product itself. But it goes into, certainly from a marketing point of view into the branding, I’ve often seen that go go astray because, oh, I like this color.

I. You like that color and that font, but that’s got nothing to do with whether your audience likes that and it doesn’t. And whether that stacks against your competitors and what the message is that it sends, there are so many different things to think about that go well beyond what your personal preference is.

And that’s where the difference isn’t it? Between creating what is a brand that’s just for you and your family to, to consume and maybe a few other people, if you’re lucky, and something that you’re actually turning into a decent sized business.

Y Yes and you know what? It’s not just at the beginning either.

The ginger beverage that I was talking about, they ended up launching and changing formulations and changing labels and branding two or three times. In the first two years without really ever getting to market, and brand in the first five years could change as, as much as two to five times, and that’s not unusual because you don’t always.

Know that you got it right in the beginning. Even if you did all this work in the beginning you’re still tweaking with the consumer. You’re changing your messaging, you’re changing your packaging because the consumer hasn’t responded as you expected them to. But it can be fixed. Many brands go through this, but it.

So it’s not out of the question to, to have that happen too, which again, expensive way of doing business. But successful brands have to tweak and tweak because they continue to listen to the consumer and and the consumer really tells ’em what they want.

Yeah, and a brand’s such an important thing because you start to identify with it and people make so many subconscious decisions before they even pick something up.

And then you, once it’s embedded as well, it’s hard to change as even big companies like Coca-Cola will tell you, try and add a new variation in the label. Add something different in add a new, flavor. All of those things can actually be incredibly difficult at times.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. It’s I think Coke has been through that a few times where they’ve had to backtrack, haven’t they? They’ve they’ve introduced something and then they’ve turned around and gone. The public didn’t like it. And so even the big brands get it wrong.

Yes, absolutely.

And the big brands sometimes go through it more than the startup brands go through it because. They’ve got all kinds of objectives from return on investment. They’re their branding people and their new product people have to prove the viability of it. And if it’s not successful on the sales side, then they’re constantly re revamping the brands and trying to.

Increase and build their sales and profitability. And so sometimes they’re doing they’re doing more work with that, thank goodness they have more money to do that. But they’re doing it even more than we think. That they are, and then they make misses, zero coke, zero years and years ago or any number of things.

And I don’t know what they’re doing today with their packaging. They’re putting names of people on their packaging.

Yeah. And I think that’s interesting thing, isn’t it? It’s it’s an industry that is so super competitive, but it is an industry where that therefore where that desire and the need to stand out.

Is. Prevalent all the time, isn’t it? Because there are so many new things that are coming onto the market, and how do you actually stand out and be different is, if it’s one magic ingredient, how do you actually highlight that? Or is it something more, or is it not actually even a matter of being different?

It’s just a matter of producing something that looks different, even though it might be the same as something else. Like it’s a. A very interesting industry in that respect.

It is. It is. And you’re constantly tweaking and, the US market is a little bit, is a little bit. Different. I like to say sometimes we’ve been this way for years and years on steroids and especially because, the big companies are public companies and you’re always managing based on the stock market.

But we, unlike any other country in the world. Our maniacs with regard to introducing and launching product extensions, new brands new, um, new and different categories. And the big companies are, they work really hard at doing that. And that’s why they end up the other big thing about being an entrepreneur and developing a product and building a product and being eventually successful about with it, like I talked about Vitamin Water, is that the big companies end up buying up these brands that the entrepreneur has been able to build and build to a successful point because.

They’re, they have a hard time really getting it done in their systems.

And is that the ultimate goal for a lot of these businesses to that, that they’re trying to build something that will get on the radar of the big companies who, who will then buy them out? Is that what the goal is?

Absolutely.

This industry, I don’t when I interview. Entrepreneurs in the beginning and ask them about their goals. I always ask, are you building this to keep it or are you building it to sell it? And if entrepreneurs are almost always, I would say 90% of them are building it to sell it. They’re not building it to have a nice.

Family business. And I think that is because there, this industry has been like that for 20 years. That the brands, the buying and selling of brands and the people that have really been successful at it are. I have seen all this happen over the years, and so they they want the big gold at the end of the rainbow.

And is that the starting point as well, that you have to be prepared to scale and scale fast? Is that the is that how you have to be thinking when you start something like this?

Yes. Now. It does take a while so by the time I, and I’ve also had a lot of entrepreneurs ask me I wanna get in front of Coca-Cola, I wanna get in front of General Mills, or I wanna get in front of any number of companies.

And Coca-Cola always had a venture capital group, but you can’t even speak to Coca-Cola until you’re $10 million in revenue. And it can take a long time to get to $10 million in revenue. And so, and $10 million in revenue is also. Most likely national distribution with several retailer channels.

And so you’re pretty equipped to, to have a company that is moving in the right direction, but they, the big companies don’t even wanna talk to you before $10 million in revenue. And they’re buying distribution. They’re not buying. They are not buying a brand or an idea because they think that, oh, it’s differentiated and we could take and build it from here because we’re gonna be better at it than the entrepreneur.

No, they, they wanna buy distribution, they wanna buy velocity, and they wanna buy consumer demand. And that has to be proven in order for them to begin to look at it. And a lot of times they’ll buy into it. A portion of it and take a portion of the company before they actually buy the brand.

And that goes on for anywhere from two to five years where they may buy into the brand, but then then eventually they’ll buy the entire brand.

And I, is that, I, is it realistic that most businesses that are going into this. That’s where they’re trying to head. Is that a realistic goal for pe for businesses?

How many of these kinds of companies can a Coca-Cola and the various others want to buy?

How many businesses

I. How, yeah. How do they want to keep buying businesses like this all the time? Are they buying them for the innovation or are they buying them to, to shut them out?

They’re buying the, they are buying them for the innovation because they have not been able to innovate within their own systems. The way that, that the smaller companies have. I’m, all of a sudden what just popped into my mind was Crave. And Crave is a natural beef jerky company that was bought by General Mills, I believe several years ago.

And. And what was happening during the time when General Mills was also doing, they had a big venture group that they still have, but they’re not buying as much in recent years. They actually would general Mills was looking in the natural foods business quite a bit and so they were looking to get into.

Each category, snack foods, you name it that they could actually add a natural product because natural foods and health and wellness and the consumers ta taste as well as what they want in their ingredients and has changed so much over the years and the bigger companies.

Are just continuing to want to add that to their portfolio. I think PepsiCo just bought Poppy, which is a probiotic beverage as an example. I.

Yeah, I think people forget the simple fact that you mentioned earlier on is that smaller companies have the ability to maneuver and make changes fast.

Bigger companies don’t have that luxury. There are too many moving parts. There are too many things to consider. So often that’s the reason why they can look to some of these smaller companies because the ability to be more flexible in the market and to make change is much easier.

Yes, it. It is it’s much easier to be able to make change and have flexibility in the marketplace when you actually don’t have to, you don’t have to go through the product development as much in your own system.

If you’ve got the ability to evaluate those brands that have been successful and are really moving the needle,

talk to me about you personally though. Do you get, do you still get the thrill out of every ti of new brands all the time and new businesses and doing that because you’ve been there and done that a few times.

I do. I do. I’m fascinated. It’s really tough to walk around. The largest trade show in the World is the Natural Products Expo that is out in Anaheim every march. And, every year you go there and you look at all the brands and you look for innovation. And when I get most passionate when somebody comes to me that really does have a strong idea, and then I can take, I, I can really help them run with it.

And I loved I loved to be able to help them with the consumer messaging, to be able to dig into what ingredients they might, they might want to switch around and to really help them. I find myself much more challenged than somebody coming to me with another energy drink. That, that, that is true, that if you’re just coming to me with another.

Something that really doesn’t have the innovation or the differentiation, then I’m certainly not as excited and I may not even, I may not even take you on as a client.

And it’s interesting when you say the innovation in the industry because it’s tough, isn’t it? It’s not I don’t know how many years ago that someone first came up with the idea of going there’s this thing that we can, everyone can get for free by turning on the tap, but we’re gonna put it in a bottle and sell it to you called water.

That was, that was, an innovative first step. But it’s, how innovative is it really these days? Is there actually stuff that hasn’t been done yet because it, it feels like there’s always something new, but how have we not ran out of ideas in this industry?

That’s I don’t I don’t mean to snicker about that, but you’re absolutely right.

You walk this trade show with thousands upon thousands of new entries and you come back from it and you say what’s the most innovative thing that you saw? And sometimes you take a stretch, but there’s there, there are ways of innovating and. It’s not just about ingredients, it’s not just about functionality.

It’s, it can be packaging. There’s a lot of innovations that are coming to fruition from packaging and the way that we consume are. Our products, functional beverages as an example of, they’re convenient. I can, in, instead of taking a pill, I can take I have to drink water anyway and I can put collagen in it and I can put it on the market and.

And so we’ve got the opportunity still to do things if we really dig in. And, but it, it’s a challenge. And that’s probably one of the other challenges about building a new product these days, is that I’ve gotta figure out how to differentiate it.

It is such an important thing, isn’t it?

It’s those little things that can make a huge difference in the way something, is marketed. And the way it captures the audience and knowing who your audience is. It goes back to where we started the conversation really, isn’t it? It’s that whole idea of understanding your different audiences and being able to be seen as innovative to them.

Is what counts. And it could be, as you say, it could be the packaging or it could be the actual in this case, the actual drink itself.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It I a story that goes back quite a bit, but when I was at seven 11, I just had this gentleman reach out to me. He said, thank you so much.

I my nickname is Queen of Beverages, and he, I had sent him an email and he said, I remember when you helped me get Fiji water on the shelves at seven 11. And, I evaluated this, I had a category where the pre there’s three segments of water and it was premium. It was mainstream and it was, um, value and I had one one premium water on the shelf and based on volume in turns, I really could only afford to have one, one premium water on the shelf.

And Fiji comes to me. Fiji had a square bottle. They had a picture of. Fiji waterfalls in the back that showed through the front and I said, you know what? You’ve got something that is totally differentiated that the consumer’s never seen. Nothing different about the water, you know? Really I have been in the water business in other areas too, so I know a lot about water and what can differentiate you.

But it was all about the packaging and. And sure enough, PG became, it was about a $10 million brand when they came to me and they grew to over 200 million.

Amazing. It’s and it is. So it does bamboozle people at times where you go, it’s. It’s water. In most countries, you can just turn on the tap and get the water for free.

And it’s, and yet people are buying the bottled water on a consistent basis. And I find it fascinating as well, when you go to whether it’s a seven 11 or some equivalent thereof. And particularly I fascinated by it, particularly when you’re on the road, you’re driving on the road, you make a stop and you.

I wanna get some water to take in the car. Fine. That makes sense. But looking at it and trying to go, why would you pay extra for a premium brand in water when you can get the generic brand, whatever it might be, that is so much less. It just. It astonishes me, because there isn’t really a difference.

Is there, when you, when it comes down to it, it’s still water.

It’s still water. There’s a lot of factors to it. Certainly. And we I was actually involved still am a little bit with a source water out of Brazil, which is. The marketed as the purest water ever discovered. But what does the purest water ever discovered mean?

What it means is that it’s really low on minerals or anything. It has less than 10 total dissolved solids in it. But how do you communicate that to the consumer? And we would put these test things in bottles of premium, other premium waters that were higher and just a regular spring water to a Aquafina or Dasani as an example, which are Coke and Pepsi brands that, that are reverse osmosis.

So they don’t have a lot of TDS in them either, but, you know what, what makes me want to consume one versus the other? Now the tools that we were using to put in the other premium waters that were really high on minerals would turn the premium water into what looks like palms gun, a scum.

And I kept on telling my business partner, I said, I don’t really think we can market that to the consumer. It’s. Great. I know that you raised the money based on the fact that the investor would not drink those other waters, but, and so you have to, um. With premium waters and there’s a ton of ’em, and they’re all, they come from all over the world.

You have to really figure out the marketing aspect and the emotional connection and the, like the example with Fiji, your marketing it through the packaging and that’s what’s really selling it.

We could talk for a long time about a lot of these a lot of these drinks. It’s been fascinating.

Just two final things I wanted to ask you about, and one is just something you alluded to earlier in the conversation. I know you’re working on putting these 10 pillars into a book, but tell me just in a broad sense, what are the 10 pillars really about?

The 10 pillars. I like to also say that without all the spokes of a wheel, you can’t really move it forward.

The 10 pillars are all the pillars that I believe are critical to having in place in order to have a successful company, and they range from. The first one, which I’m actually in, in the link that I’ve given you. I’ve written an overview of market opportunity and consumer need, which we talked about a lot during this meeting.

But it goes all the way from the viable business model, which I talked about, and that’s one of the pillars, making sure that you have the viable business model product differentiation. Then sales and distribution marketing, both consumer messaging as well as how you promote with your customer base and financing, the critical areas that you really need to have in place to make sure that you’re funded well, so that you can be successful year over year.

And so that’s what the 10 Pillars are all about. They’re putting team and infrastructure that’s it, it covers every vertical, every aspect of what it takes to be successful.

Fantastic. And then there’s something we’ll talk about more into the future, I’m sure. Just tell us just on the back of that, the the link that we’re gonna put in the show notes to people, what are people gonna find in that?

What’s the value for them?

The, they’re going to find an overview of pillar number one, which is the market opportunity and, um, the market opportunity and the consumer need. And I. I have basically written a, pretty much a white paper on. What it takes to, what you need to know about that first pillar.

And and so it’s it’s a a teaser if you will to help the the client understand. Anybody who’s interested in really. Looking into it further. And of course my website as well actually has all 10 of the pillars and what you’ll eventually learn from the program that I’m putting together.

But, and the website has a recap of each one of the 10 pillars. And

I think what’s important for people to understand as well is that these learnings from, that you’ve had extensively in this industry apply to other industries as well. So it’s not something that is just restricted to people who are thinking, oh, I’ve got it.

I want to get into the food and beverage industry. There is the implications for this and the learnings from this are extended to many businesses.

Absolutely. And I like to think that way with regard to the 10 pillars. And a lot of times, somebody came to me the other day and said, do you have experience in the beauty world?

Even though it’s not food and beverage, it is still B2B, then B and B2C, and. The all companies, to some degree, are working the same way, whether it’s technology or building. A another type of product that is, is to be sold primarily to the consumer. But it the things that you need to have in place do crossover.

Other industries, almost every industry.

I’m gonna encourage everyone to check the links out in the show notes to get access to that. Just one final question that I like to ask all my guests is, what is the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

Have to go back to the lack of industry experience and the. Their passion is so strong, but their frustrations around everything. I had somebody a lot of times they’ll, the aha moment though for them will be we’ll talk through all of this. And I had somebody call me about a product that, that was to be added to coffee that you bought.

That was. Ready to drink. And I said, you really need to know you, you really need to be going to the coffee buyer, not the beverage buy, not the package beverage buyer. And the gentleman said to me, are you kidding me? That’s amazing. And so it’s just those little nuggets that when we have the conversations and I don’t.

Like to give out a whole lot of information necessarily, but as we talk through their idea and I share with them answer their questions and it’s a nugget like that will be an aha. It’s not just one area or one thing. It’s just that all of a sudden I say something and they’re like, wow, I never thought about that, but that’s amazing.

That’s. That’s great feedback.

I love that. I love that. And look, thank you so much for, in incredible insights fascinating industry and lots of things that I think all business leaders can learn from in this. And as I said to everyone, I encourage people to go and check out the links in the show notes to find out more.

But Demi, thank you so much for being part of the program.

Alright, thank you. Thank you for having me.

And to everyone listening in, don’t forget. As I said, check out the show notes. And also don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time, don’t forget to tune in to Biz Bites for thought leaders.

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